The Press: The Unhappy Time

After 20 years of syndicated punditing, Columnist Walter Lippmann last
week let readers in on a handy trick of his trade. "No one can have
been writing for newspapers for a long time," he wrote, "without being
fully aware of how much safer it is to prophesy disaster than to
venture to express a hope. It is safe to be gloomy. If one prophesies
disaster and it happens, one has been a true prophet. And if it does
not happen, one is readily forgiven and may even suggest that but for
the warning the disaster would have happened."